sir.’ He couldn’t have been closer to her if they had been copulating. Why could she not stop thinking about having sex with Jake Stone?
He smiled and raised an eyebrow, signalling for her to continue.
‘My flatmate will be expecting me home tonight and I haven’t brought a change of clothing. I’m not ready to stay away from home.’
‘It does not matter to mewhether you think you are ready or not. That is what will happen to you. I make all the decisions regarding what you will and will not do. Am I clear now?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then thank me.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Cally could not see how that changed anything. Her flatmate would worry. Her family too if they failed to hear from her. She would have to go home, whatever he said, and would do it as soon as she got the chance. Even though she would return the next day to suffer the consequences.
He wasn’t so easily misled, apparently. He smiled that knowing half-smile, as if she could not possibly know as well as him what was good for her. ‘You will work here for me, during the day. At night you will stay in my apartment. That way you will be able to service all my needs. All the time.’ He kissed her again, more forcibly on the lips, as if he too anticipated with relish the services she would provide for him. He gave her the wordless signal she was coming to know so well already, that he expected her to thank him for his tolerance, his acceptance of her service.
She obliged. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And to make certain you understand …’ He reached into his pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. Her phone. The one that had been sitting in her handbag on the floor when she tried to leave to make coffee. ‘You will send a text to your flatmate. To your family. To all the people in your life, that might question your disappearance. I will tell you what to text.’
He handed her the phone. ‘Take my dictation, Miss Hammond.’
His tone of voice revealed to her, most clearly, that he wasn’t about to trust her. That he would expect her to do as he commanded but would check her work. And that she would be more than sorry if she failed to obey his wishes. To the letter.
She complied, biting the inside of her cheek in abject frustration that she had been out-manoeuvred. He seemed to understand her feelings and, if his smile was anything to go by, enjoy himself all the more at her suffering.
The message he created suggested that she was about to take a little time away, so not to worry. She’d be in touch. It went out to everyone who mattered, including Mathers at the newspaper. It was as if Jake Stone knew more about her life than he possibly could.
He then retrieved her phone from her fingers and deleted the number of her latest boyfriend, telling her as he did so – and how the hell did he know that anyway? Then put the phone – her phone – back into his pocket. Her isolation was complete.
Cally began to realise she might possibly have bitten off more than she could chew. She had been playing with fire and everyone knew what happened to girls who played with fire. They got well and truly burned.
A welter of emotions welled up inside her. Anger, excitement, humiliation, sexual frustration. Everything became too much and tears surged and ran down her face. It wasn’t like her at all.
Jake Stone appeared to look sympathetic. Then annoyed. ‘Come, come,’ he tutted. ‘You are here to please me, not yourself. Put your own feelings aside. It will be better for you if you only feel what I allow you to feel. Is that not so?’ He wiped his thumbs across her cheekbones, gathering up the droplets, then slowly pushed his thumbs into her mouth, one at a time, so she could taste the bitter saltiness of her own tears.
She nodded her head as he encouraged her to suckle on his thumbs, one by one. He then clasped her head between his hands and bent to kiss her, entering the warm, dark cavern of her mouth with his tongue. He jerked her head until she